Azerbaijan moves Russian state journalist to house arrest from jail after freeing his colleague

BAKU (Reuters) -A court in Azerbaijan said on Friday a senior Russian journalist could leave jail and be placed under house arrest for three months instead amid an ongoing investigation into his employer, the Russian state-owned outlet Sputnik Azerbaijan.

In a move that coincided with a souring of ties between the two nations, Yevgeny Belousov, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik Azerbaijan, was arrested in June alongside several colleagues and accused of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship and money laundering.

Russia called the journalists' detentions "illegal" and summoned Azerbaijan's envoy in Moscow after the arrests, citing Baku's "unfriendly actions".

Baku launched an investigation into the outlet after ordering the Russian state company that owns it, Rossiya Segodnya, to close its offices in the South Caucasus country.

Amid signs that the tensions are de-escalating, Belousov's colleague, Executive Director Igor Kartavykh, was freed from house arrest in Azerbaijan and travelled back to Russia earlier this week, he told state media.

The arrests of the journalists came amid a diplomatic spat between Moscow and Baku that erupted after authorities in Russia arrested a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis in connection with historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings. Two of the suspects died in Russian police custody, angering Azerbaijan.

Relations between the two countries were already strained after Russian air defences mistakenly fired at an Azerbaijani passenger plane during a Ukrainian drone attack over southern Russia late last year, killing at least 38 people.

Azerbaijan freed Kartavykh after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at a summit in Tajikistan and offered his most candid admission to date that Moscow bore responsibility for the airline incident.

(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova in Baku; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi; Editing by Andrew Osborn)